‘Back to the Future’ California Recap and 2022 Political Predictions

While political pundits predict a red wave across the country in the 2022 midterm elections, many even anticipate a wave of change in the Golden State. How big the California wave is, and what form it will take, will be anyone’s best educated guess.

California’s 2021 Year in Review is more of a scene from “Back to the Future” or “Groundhog Day.” We started a 2021 recap and felt it was exactly like last year’s, but with a failed Recall Election of the Governor.

Case in point: The state ramped up testing again with the COVID Omicron variant making its way to the United States, and is breathlessly screeching about “cases,” while hospitalizations remain low at only 4,747 total in the state of nearly 40 million residents, and 2 deaths on Dec. 29th. Doctors report most “cases” are merely cold symptoms, or are asymptomatic.

Regardless, the state just issued strict new isolation guidance for those with COVID, despite the most recent CDC recommendations reducing isolation and quarantine to 5 days, down from 10.

The state of California again decided to ignore that new guidance and impose stricter rules – for what purpose, we can only surmise.

California schools and universities have announced school children and college students will need to test for COVID before returning to school following the holiday and New Year break, but still must wear masks indoors.

Colleges and universities are demanding booster shots of the returning students. UCLA and six other University of California undergraduate campuses announced Tuesday that classes will begin remotely at the start of the new term.

All UC students and UC staff will be required to show proof they received a COVID-19 booster shot.

Los Angeles schools are threatening to impose outdoor mask rules.

Is this 2020, 2021 or 2022?

Ugh. Recap over. Let’s move on to the future.

Democrats have clearly lost their grip on education as a party platform. As the Globe reported in October, only hours after California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement of a COVID-19 vaccination mandate for all schoolchildren in California, homeschooling and tutoring inquiries shot up dramatically, with some homeschooling sites even going down to the sheer volume of users searching for help.

California voters will get the chance to vote on two ballot initiatives in 2022 proposing Education Savings Accounts for California students, which follow the students’ choice of schools: private school or homeschool.

We asked some of California’s political junkies, the politically well-connected, legislative staffers, lobbyists, attorneys, candidates and others to weigh in with their political predictions for 2022. What a wide range of predictions and observations we received!

Not everyone was in a position to self-identify, so when you see “Anonymous,” know that we know the identity of the contributor to our 2022 predictions.

1. The legislature will pass and Newsom will sign an “exit tax” to be levied on people leaving the state for a better life. They’ll do this by levying a tax on U-Haul, Ryder, moving companies like Bekins and United Van Lines, along with other independent moving companies for any out-of-state move. This will create a black market for clandestine movers, and drive the price of trailers sky-high. It will also create a reverse “Grapes of Wrath” effect with people simply loading up their vehicles and leaving the state to escape the “great depression” of California.

California will pick up 9 Republican Congressional seats minimum. If 2010 was the year of the Tea Party, 2022 is the year of the Parent Party. We saw this in 1993, when then-First Lady Hillary Clinton pushed social medicine. New Jersey and Virginia voted in Republican Governors, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Republicans took majority control of the House of Representatives for the first time in forty years after the 1994 elections. Then again in 2009 when President Barack Obama pushed Obamacare, and the Tea Party was formed to fight it. 2021 was an absolute attack on everything decent and normal. We saw Virginia flip to a Republican Governor, and even New Jersey had a huge Republican swing. 2022 is going to be a major swing.

I’ve been speaking to parent groups across the socio-economic spectrum in California, which literally grew out of nothing since September.

Lastly, the Hispanic swing: The Recall Election of Gov. Gavin Newsom showed 54% Hispanic support in that wanted the recall. We are seeing this in Texas, Florida and other parts of the U.S., where it’s clear, Hispanics want change over the same issues: crime, schools, and the madness of essential/non-essential businesses… they were hurt the most.

The demographic which votes the least is the 25-45 age group. But they are parents, they work, and they will vote now. This is the Parent Party.

Anonymous in Los Angeles (snark alert):

Ironic: A bumbling and not-very-bright state henchman will be put in charge of the Dominion vote-counting machines for the 2022 California gubernatorial election and will accidentally switch the intended vote-rigging outcome, resulting in a landslide victory for Ric Grenell as California’s next Governor.

Anonymous in Sacramento:

I predict another year of grappling with the unhoused issue. No “solving,” just “grappling.”

Anonymous in Sacramento (snark alert):

Knowing what’s on the political horizon, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will give Gov. Newsom a congressional Medal of Honor for women’s right’s  – ensuring the highest number of minority abortions (men and women per the official stats) in the country at tax payer expense.

Thus ends the predictions.

Meanwhile, lining streets throughout the state are ever-expanding and growing homeless encampments of ratty tents and corrugated boxes, battered old RVs, campers and trailers, vans, and passenger vehicles, which have become homes for the state’s vagrants, drug addicts and homeless street population.

2022 is indeed shaping up to be epoch times in California. Could this be the tipping point?